Readers' comments

GWMustGo asks that companies retrain their workers. My question is, what if the employees don't want to be retrained?

In the 25 years I have been working in my industry, I have seen many employees (of all ages) refuse to take the initiative to learn the new technologies, even when offered the opportunity to be retrained. I have also seen many employees (of all ages) that embraced new technology and kept up their skills. These latter employees are what businesses want and need.

And an aside - over the last few years, as we have been recruiting engineers, 3 out of 4 candidates have been immigrants to this county.

Of course, I am in favor of unrestricted immigration (with the exception of criminals). Why deny a self-selected elite the opportunity to improve our country?

Dr. Gary Becker proposed sensible approach to immigration in 1970's, if I am not mistaken. That is to give bigger carrots to legal immigrants and to carry bigger sticks for the illegal ones. (Naturally, Becker goes into a bit more detail on the subject.) Six administrations, eight recessions, three real state and two high-tech bubbles later nobody in Washington is capable of using this very sensible approach. And I don't even bother to ask why...

Every year about this time, corporate America starts making noises about h1bs through articles, studies etc. These visas a mostly a form of corporate subsidy to drive down labor cost. You import hundred thousand engineer, wages will go down ten to twenty thousand across board. There is a reason these companies do not hire these people to work in their own native countries.

Yes, the reason is that these people are hard working, motivated, and better educated than most native born Americans, and want to live and work amongst the best and brightest. Famous scientists and engineers (Einstein and Sergey Brin's father, came to the US via these kinds of visas). If they are truly talentless leave it up to a private firm to decide who to hire and lift restrictions.

This is true. However, none of the founders of these companies immigrated to the United States on an H-1B visa.

The problem I have with this argument is the assumption that "immigration" means "H-1B visa". An H-1B ties an immigrant to a specific employer; if they're fired, they have to leave the country. People in this situation cannot go off and found a company until they have permanent residency, which can often take 6-8 years!

Moreover, spending years focused on not upsetting one's employer can leave one unwilling to rock the boat in general. I am a Silicon Valley engineer, and I work with a lot of current and former H-1B visa holders. They're smart and hard-working, but when it comes to their careers they are also very risk-adverse and passive, viewing success as deriving from accepting whatever management says. That attitude is fundamentally incompatible with entrepreneurship.

If you want to improve high-tech immigration to the U.S., get rid of the H-1B visa and replace it with either immediate permanent residency, or a time-limited residency that's not tied to an employer.

The biggest beef against the H1B visas is not "them dern foreigners is takin' our jobs!", it's that the US companies are laying off skilled US workers with years of experience rather than retraining them.

I work in the financial software sector, specializing in software for very large companies. Our software uses "older" technology (mainframes and COBOL). When one of our customers opts to move to newer technology, they have two options:
1) Lay off the skilled employees who have knowledge of how the business works, and hire a bunch of kids out of college (domestic or foreign) who know the new stuff but do not have a clue as to what the business does, how they work, and how to get things done; or
2) Spend a few bucks to train their current IT staff in the newer technology, allowing those years of business knowledge to stay in place where it remains useful.

The companies that choose option (1) are digging themselves a big hole. We've reacquired many of those clients when the newer technology fails them. Realistically, it was a combination of the new technology, and the lack of business knowledge to react to any technology failures.

Although I regret losing the business of the companies that chose option (2), those businesses have my respect for the way they treated their employees. BTW - none of the clients who chose option (2) failed in their move to the newer technology.

Retrain your skilled employees. Don't dump them out like rubbish and cry when you can't get another 1,000 H1B visas to restaff your company.

Bollocks! The Democrat-controlled is not dumb. But if Lexington expects Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to actually read all 24 pages of "American's Loss is the World's Gain," Lexington should attend an American University - for refresher courses in Political Science.

I agree absolutely, but the same applies for unskilled workers. Pretty much. everyone not known to be a terrorist or criminal ought to be able to work here. We have a lot of native idlers and commenters to float.

Actually, I think by sending skilled laborers back to other countrys, America will have better places to import high tech products from and richer countries to export expensive goods to. We'll also have to step up and start doing more work here, rather than coast on our reputation. All this will be good for America, if not the easiest path. I am personally in favor of unrestricted immigration (except criminals). However, from the perspective of making the world a better place, maybe less immigration will help. As long as talented, freedom loving people can come to America, they will have less incentive to improve their home country.